An Integrated Telephony Call Management Service (ITCMS) may offer a variety of features accessible from a variety of devices. For example, an ITCMS may be accessible from any of a telephone connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a handheld computer, or a cellular telephone. Further, an ITCMS may offer users features and functions such as accessing caller ID, accessing voicemail, routing incoming calls to voice mail or to a specified telephone number in real or near real time, scheduling and/or establishing forwarding of incoming calls, sending e-mails and text messages, viewing and placing calls through an address book, viewing a calendar, etc. An ITCMS offers the further benefit of being accessible from anywhere on a network such as the Internet.
Testing the functionality of an ITCMS is at present generally complicated. Such tests generally take place across two or more different telecommunications networks, such as a traditional circuit switched network, and a packet switched network, e.g., an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Telephone line configurations, i.e., “talk paths,” used in testing laboratories are generally fixed or “hard-wired,” and are generally not dynamically configurable. Further, to the extent that configuration of talk paths may be said to be dynamic at all, such configuration generally must be performed by manually typing one or more command lines into a console.
Challenges and inefficiencies in configuring a test environment can further complicate and slow a testing process. Possible concurrent combinations of test lines and test equipment available to a tester are generally limited by the number and location of test lines and test equipment. While use of a digital cross connect may somewhat increase the efficiency of a testing process, a testing process may still be limited by the availability of test equipment ports in a digital cross connect, and by the location and features of test lines connected to a digital cross connect. Therefore, configuration changes are generally time consuming because configuration changes require that a human tester determine what configurations presently exist and what configurations are possible. Then a human tester is required to manually rewire telephone circuits and/or manually reconfigure features of lines to be used in a test. Of course, the foregoing manual configuration changes may be performed only by a human tester with the appropriate level of knowledge and experience for all of the systems and/or equipment being tested. Many persons in a test laboratory generally lack this proper level of knowledge and experience for some, if not all, of these systems and/or equipment being tested.
Accordingly, it is presently cumbersome and inefficient to test an ITCMS. Because present testing overly relies on testers lacking the appropriate subject matter expertise, present testing is not only slow, but is not always accurate. Further, to assist and/or support such testers, present ITCMS testing requires expensive human resources with the appropriate level of knowledge and experience who may be available on a limited basis, if at all. Moreover, ITCMS testing cannot presently be performed when such human resources are not available, meaning that equipment in a test lab may sit unused for periods of time when it could be more efficiently used to conduct tests.